“Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

It’s easy to forget that life is equal parts awesome and equal parts awful.

We have become accustomed to a baseline of awesome. If we’re fortunate housing, food, clothing and income are more or less givens in our lives. Maybe not opulent or easy, but given. The awesome has become a given.

And when awesome is a given, we develop the expectation of always.

At the same time life is full of suffering and struggle. Relating and loving involves loss and pain.

While enduring the awful we cry foul and unfair.

We don’t deserve a damned thing – an awful or awesome existence.

We are not owed a thing.

Within this journey we are to practice love within the awesome and the awful.